Pro Cycling Manager 2019 PC Review – Tour de France or Tour De Farce

Pro Cycling Manager 2019 Season is Developed by Cyanide Studio and published by Bigben Interactive and is you’ve guessed correctly, its a cycling management game which was released on PC on the 27th June.

Gameplay

When starting a new career game, you have the choice of managing a whole team or just a rider which you can create. Picking a team to manage allows you to choose from a selection of teams of varying skill/difficulty.

Choosing to manage a rider allows you to create a rider, albeit, with a limited amount of customisation, you can adjust their level of skill and specialisation as well as their overall potential over their career.

After setting up either, you’re faced with a lot of menus. For a new player, I would say this would be potentially overwhelming.

There is pretty much a menu for everything, you’re tasked with replying to emails, organising races, setting up training plans even with the tutorial and help screens I still felt lost navigating the screens, there are a lot of stats to review.

We have Menu’s.

I feel players who have played previous versions of the game, will no doubt feel at home and appreciate the improvements and new additions, however new players may find it a little challenging at first.

During the races, when managing the team you’ll need to take control of the riders, working a strategy, attacking when an opportunity shows and defending when your stamina is low, this is all controlled easily at the click of a button on a toolbar next to each rider.

The race as a single rider is a little easier as you only manage your rider, still focusing on the same tactics but also meeting goals set out by the team leader in order to boost your skills and place in the team.

The races are long, but you can adjust the simulation speed to help them along, if you’d rather just simulate the race outcome, you can do that also, although your riders don’t earn as much experience and you don’t get to experience the race itself, which to me added a lot more immersion and enjoyment.

Graphics

The menus are well designed, the information even if a little overwhelming is clearly displayed, the graphics during the 3d races the graphics are good, you get a good representation of the race, the road, scenery and riders are all well designed and look great.

The 3d races add an immersive feel often lost in management games.

Audio

The audio on the races is immersive, the sound of the crowd, cars, helicopters, the mechanical sound of the bicycles, all adds to the experience of the race, the commentary, for the most part, was ok but not great. The music is of the usual management game standard, you’ll either love it or hate it.

Longevity

There’s certainly plenty of game to play, Riding and managing the races without simulation takes quite a bit of time, so if you love the sport, you could lose a lot of hours to this game without realising it. Combine that with a love of statistics and the need to continuously improve the stats of your riders and team and it has the potential to be a life ruiner.

Starting the climb.

Conclusion

For fans of the sport of cycling or serious statistician’s there’s some serious replayability, the more you play, the more familiar the menus seem and all of the tasks and strategies feel less daunting, however if you’re not of the above, I can’t honestly see anything else that would keep me coming back to play.

However, with the games potential appeal to the right player, I award Pro Cycling Manager 2019 Season the Thumb Culture Silver Award!